Problem: Ashley is 14 years older than Christopher. Twenty years ago, Ashley was 3 times as old as Christopher. How old is Ashley now?
We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Ashley and Christopher. Let Ashley's current age be $a$ and Christopher's current age be $c$ The information in the first sentence can be expressed in the following equation: $a = c + 14$ Twenty years ago, Ashley was $a - 20$ years old, and Christopher was $c - 20$ years old. The information in the second sentence can be expressed in the following equation: $a - 20 = 3(c - 20)$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. Because we are looking for $a$ , it might be easiest to solve our first equation for $c$ and substitute it into our second equation. Solving our first equation for $c$ , we get: $c = a - 14$ . Substituting this into our second equation, we get the equation: $a - 20 = 3($ $(a - 14)$ $ -$ $ 20)$ which combines the information about $a$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $a - 20 = 3a - 102$ Solving for $a$ , we get: $2 a = 82$ $a = 41$.